The family of a Syracuse University student killed in the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 learned shortly before her scheduled funeral they received the wrong body, the victim's father said Saturday.
"I know my daughter is still out there somewhere, either in Scotland, unidentified, or shipped somewhere else," said Robert Hunt. "And we have a body here that some family is grieving over."Hunt said the body of his daughter, Karen, was examined by the Monroe County medical examiner Friday. Examiners determined Saturday through dental records and X-rays that it wasn't Karen's body, he said.
"They told me this morning they were 100 percent positive it wasn't Karen's body," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Webster.
Dr. Frederick J. Halik, a specialist in dental identification of the dead, said he determined the body was not Karen's after examining it Saturday.
"Nothing matched . . . just about nothing," Halik said.
Dr. Nicholas Forbes, chief medical examiner, said other physical discrepancies also existed.
British officials in Lockerbie said they were investigating.
"A question has been raised regarding the body of Karen Hunt," officials said in a terse statement. "The matter is the subject of further discussion and examination by appropriate medical specialists."
Hunt received word Tuesday from authorities in Scotland that the body of his daughter, who would have turned 21 Saturday, had been identified.
Miss Hunt's aunt then called officials in Scotland to get a description of the clothes on the body, he said.
"What the person over there described didn't sound like Karen's," Hunt said. The funeral, which had been scheduled for Friday, was postponed.
Hunt said he's concerned another family might receive Karen's body and cremate it without knowing its true identity.
"You can exhume a body, but you can't identify it once it's been cremated," he said.
Miss Hunt was returning to New York after completing a one-semester program in Syracuse University's Division of International Programs Abroad in London.